Rep. Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat leaving Congress after a failed Senate run, has floated herself for WNBA commissioner and called the role every middle-aged lesbian’s dream job.
The soon-to-be-former congresswoman from Minnesota’s Second District told the Minnesota Star Tribune she would take the call if the league came looking. Cathy Engelbert has stepped down after seven years, and a successor has not been named.
Daily Mail reported Craig’s pitch after she inserted her name into the open search for a new WNBA boss.
Craig is 54, a married mother of four, and a regular at Minnesota Lynx games at Target Center in Minneapolis. She framed the vacancy in personal terms.
She said she had promised her wife, Cheryl, she would not make immediate plans. Then she shared her interest anyway.
"If the WNBA called, that's the one job my wife would say, \"Take the call,\" at this moment in time."
Craig went further with the identity line that now defines the story.
"WNBA commissioner is every middle-aged lesbian's dream job."
That is the pitch from a sitting member of Congress who opted out of a House re-election bid and then lost a Democratic Senate primary to Peggy Flanagan. In a September post on X, Craig wrote that she would be a “free agent in January.”
Craig is a lifelong basketball fan. In 2024 she traveled to New York to watch the Lynx face the Liberty in the WNBA Finals. In a 2025 statement on equal pay, she claimed the league wanted New York to win.
"The WNBA wanted the Liberty to win [in 2024]."
She continued that the Liberty offered a “big-market team,” “superstar faces,” and “a tidy storyline for the league office and league Commissioner who literally wore the New York City skyline on her dress that night.” Minnesota, she said, was “the wrong script. Too gritty. Too real. Too inconvenient.”
So the same lawmaker now offering herself for the commissioner’s chair previously accused the league office of preferring a cleaner big-city narrative over her home team.
Engelbert’s tenure brought real growth. The WNBA now makes around $200 million a year from its national media deal, about $175 million more annually than before she arrived. League revenue has grown tenfold to nearly $400 million a year. Forbes has put top franchise values somewhere between $250 million and $1 billion; in 2019 a team could be had for $15 million.
Those numbers did not quiet the arguments. Players pressed the league on pay, officiating, and safety. Some Caitlin Clark fans attacked the league office over hard fouls against the Indiana Fever star. Former NBA players Royce White and Enes Kanter Freedom have pushed the league on gender-inclusion policies, with White declaring eligibility for the 2027 WNBA Draft. League sources have repeatedly told media both men remain ineligible.
Craig has not laid out a detailed plan for any of that. She has offered interest, a personal endorsement from her wife, and the claim that the job is a dream post for middle-aged lesbians. No public word has come from the WNBA that it has contacted her.
In 2019, Craig and Sen. Tina Smith took a selfie at a Lynx game with Jessica McDonald, Kristen Hamilton, Sam Mewis, and Megan Rapinoe. Fandom is real. Running a professional league amid pay fights, officiating disputes, star protection debates, and sex-based eligibility questions is another job entirely.
A Democratic congresswoman on her way out of office just turned a vacant sports executive post into an identity slogan. Taxpayers and ticket buyers still get to judge whether that is leadership or a job application dressed as a punch line.
